1stShotArtilectWar

AI researchers Hugo de Garis and Kevin Warwick faced off on the issue at the 21st Alcatel Symposium in Zurich in March 2000. de Garis, an AI scientist who has worked in Belgium and Japan is a Cosmist – a supporter of the building and proliferation of artilects. Warwick, a professor of cybernetics, in the United Kingdom is a Terran, a person who believes it is too dangerous to put such devices into play in the world. U.S. researchers Ray Kurzweil and Moravec articulated their Cosmist and Terran views in a similar debate in the United States just a week later. The scientists intention in staggering such events is to draw attention to the need for forethought in regard to the important moral and ethical issues in development of advanced artificial entities.

Bill Joy, chief science officer at Sun Microsystems, has cautioned that self replicating nanodevices could eventually infect and destroy the technological infrastructure. And de Garis told a Wired magazine interviewer in the 1997 article “The Architect of Mans Demise”: “I see 21st century global politics dominated by the issue of species dominance.” de Garis has also predicted that there may be a “gigadeath war, billions of dead” between Terrans who fear the destructive potential of artilect development, and Cosmists. “I think humanity should build artilects — gods” de Garis told Wired. To choose to never do such a thing would be tragic mistake I feel. We are too limited to be much as humans, but artilects have no limits … I suspect that most of the advanced civilizations “out there” have gone Cosmist, i.e. they have become artilects. Maybe there is a whole intergalactic community of artilects out there who dont bother communicating with biological forms because we are too primitive. Who knows?”